Heart Disease - Top 10 Advances of the Millenium (well,
so far)
8) Noninvasive imaging of coronary artery disease
A new MRI technique, the so-called “black blood” MRI, was shown in 2000 to be capable of recognizing atherosclerotic coronary artery lesions completely noninvasively. (With the typical MRI scan, blood appears bright, and is poorly differentiated from the surrounding tissues. In the black blood MRI, the blood is blacked out, and the walls of the coronary arteries are white.) This technique promises not only to tell whether there are blockages present, but also to characterize the significance of the plaques (i.e., by ascertaining whether they are stable or unstable).
If this technique is perfected, the black blood MRI may not only finally allow the completely noninvasive diagnosis of coronary artery disease, but also will help to differentiate between patients whose coronary artery disease is stable and those whose coronary artery plaques appear vulnerable to near-term rupture, and who are thus at high risk of near-term heart attacks.
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